TSA agents routinely steal from passengers during gropefests

[MARIS61]

NEW YORK (AP) — Police say a Transportation Security Administration agent stole $5,000 in cash from a passenger's jacket as he was going through security at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the latest in a string of thefts that has embarrassed the agency.

Alexandra Schmid took the cash from the jacket of a Bangladeshi passenger as it went along an X-ray conveyor belt at around 8 p.m. Wednesday, said Al Della Fave, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's police force.

"In viewing the surveillance video, we observed her removing the currency from the victim's jacket pocket," Della Fave said.

The video showed Schmid wrapping the money in a plastic glove and taking it to a bathroom, he said.

The money hasn't been recovered, Della Fave said. Police are investigating whether Schmid gave it to another person in the bathroom.

The 31-year-old Schmid was arrested on a charge of grand larceny and suspended pending an investigation. Her attorney's name wasn't immediately known.

...

It's the latest in a series of recent theft allegations against TSA employees:

— Last month, an agent who worked searching checked luggage at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was suspended after the owner of a stolen iPad used the tracking feature on the device to locate it at the agent's home. Police found seven other iPads there.

— Also in January, authorities charged an agent at Miami International Airport with swiping items and luggage and smuggling them out of the airport in a hidden pocket of his work jacket. He was arrested after one of the items, an iPad, was spotted for sale on Craigslist.

— Two other former TSA agents at JFK were sentenced on Jan. 10 to six months in jail and five years' probation for stealing $40,000 from a piece of luggage in January 2011. The agents, Coumar Persad and Davon Webb, had pleaded guilty to grand larceny, obstructing governmental administration and official misconduct.

— Last year, a TSA supervisor and one of his officers pleaded guilty in a scheme that lifted $10,000 to $30,000 from passengers' belongings at Newark Liberty International Airport. A federal judge sentenced the supervisor, Michael Arato, to 2½ years in prison and his subordinate, Al Raimi, to six months of home confinement.


http://news.yahoo.com/police-tsa-agent-jfk-stole-5k-passenger-163552145.html

Don't you feel safer now?

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

not surprising. i wouldn't think its "routine" though.

 

[magnifier661]

Man that is just fucked up! Never felt safer. It's a pain in the ass traveling overseas sometimes. They make things much harder.

 

[MARIS61]

not surprising. i wouldn't think its "routine" though.

Continuing or rampant might have been better choices.

These employees worked for TSA for years, screening millions of passengers.

Care to compute the odds on how many thefts escaped detection during those years?

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Saw that approximately 2 million people fly per day. I would imagine the theft rate to be a percentage of 1%.

 

[MARIS61]

Saw that approximately 2 million people fly per day. I would imagine the theft rate to be a percentage of 1%.

Let's go with 1/10th of 1 percent:

2 000 000 x 365 x .001 = 730 000 thefts per year.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

and you have 5 examples. :MARIS61:

 

[jlprk]

:MARIS61:

Yet you just said there are 7.3 million thefts per year.

I worked with a woman who, with her husband, was all about maximizing their income in various little entrepeneurial tasks like cutting wood and selling it. Her mouth watered at the high pay she could make with TSA, and then she landed the job. She was so much into making money that she continued working her little part-time job with me, wearing her new TSA uniform, so she could then run to her new job at the airport each day.

She'd tell stories of how the previous day they'd had a lockdown because of some emergency. I'd ask, what was the outcome, since it wasn't in the newspaper. She didn't know, she was new and out of the loop. I said, maybe they're just drilling or testing you guys and there was no real emergency. You'd think it would have been in the paper. But then, maybe they keep things secret so they can hold people secretly, now that Bush got rid of the 200-year old civil right of habeas corpus (the requirement to disclose who's being held by the police).

That's the kind of government we live in now. Everyone needs to be afraid to stay alive. I guess that since the economy is dying, they're preparing to stop little revolts here and there.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I never said 7.3 million anything. I would think that having something stolen by a TSA agent is on the order of getting struck by lightning.